Many network standards provide little inherent control for traffic quality of service (QoS), class of service (CoS) or prioritization. Such environments often create a non-deterministic usage of the network. Such non-deterministic networks are particularly problematic when attempting to delivery latency sensitive traffic such as, for example, real-time voice and multimedia content.
A variety of IEEE 802.11 wireless standards are well known in the art and many of these may provide a user experience that is not sufficiently deterministic. For example, the 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN (WLANs) standards are utilized across a wide range of devices. These 802.11 wireless networks utilize a protocol that is inherently non-deterministic. As such, the performance of 802.11 networks for latency sensitive applications such as voice over IP (VoIP) or streaming multimedia may be less than desirable. Other wireless network standards that are expected to be widely used in the future including 802.11n, 802.15, 802.16 and others. Some of these standards may similarly lack the desired determinism that latency sensitive applications may require.
Standards do exist to prioritize network traffic based on content. For example, the IEEE 802.1p standard provides a prioritization specification that operates at the media access control (MAC) framing layer (OSI model layer 2). In this standard, the header includes a three-bit field that allows for providing 8 different levels of priority to assign to packets. Network adapters and switches may then route traffic based upon the prioritization levels. The IEEE has made broad recommendations for the 8 different priority levels based on traffic type ranging from network critical traffic down to loss eligible traffic (in order of highest priority): network management, voice, video, controlled load, expected effort, undefined, background, and best effort. In the 802.1p standard, traffic is simply classified and no bandwidth reservations are assigned. The 802.1p standard is an extension of the 802.1Q standard that specifies a VLAN tag that is appended to a MAC frame. The 802.1p standard utilizes a prioritization field (3 bits) that was not defined and used in the 801.1Q standard.
It is desirable to provide improvements in the methods and techniques for providing a more deterministic process for implementing network traffic prioritization, particularly for implementing latency sensitive applications.
The devices that may benefit from improved network traffic prioritization are wide ranging. For example, as the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.